Politics

临阵脱逃

Dec 18, 2017 Nina L. Khrushcheva

纽约—民族的命运，常常由一小撮人在某个特殊历史时刻的选择决定。如今，美国正面临这样一个时刻。一小撮共和党的决定不但将影响这个国家的未来，也将影响民主的未来。

现代史充满了类似的重要选择，结果有好也有坏。一百年前，俄国革命面临着列宁的钢铁意志和克伦斯基（Alexander Kerensky）的优柔寡断之间的抉择，后者最后黯然离开圣彼得堡，逃离布尔什维克之手。

在另一场俄国革命中——1999年新年前夜，总统普京在政府中站稳了脚跟，并借此一直统治至今——同样也出现了时任领导人的刚愎自用。总统叶利钦将自己和家人的安全置于俄罗斯的福祉之上，提名前克格勃上校普京为自己的继任者。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 17 Comments on this article

Phil Cartier Dec 28, 2017

The Office of Management and Budget projects that the average tax cut for middle class folks would be about $2300. That is a big chunk in a even $90,000 budget, much less a $50,000 one. I'm sure Ms. Khruscheva makes enough she won't notice.

The Joint Committee on Taxation foresees a $1.4 trillion deficit over 10 years. The former president managed about $1.2 trillion a year. There is no comparison. And already the millionaires are spending and investing and producing 3+% annual economic growth per quarter.

If the companies with profits stashed away overseas re-patriot that money the economy will grow even more. In fact, the biggest problem may be keeping it from growing too fast and driving up interest rates.

Despite my piddly little middle class income I do not envy the folks with much more wealth keeping more of their money and continuing to do better than I have. They got me where I am, not the government.
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STEPHEN LOUIE Dec 24, 2017

Mr Warren is quite right. Taxes ar
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STEPHEN LOUIE Dec 24, 2017

Mr Warren is quite right. Taxes ar
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Anthony Warren Dec 24, 2017

The author, like almost everyone in the media makes the error of thinking that tax money is money that inherently belongs to the government, as opposed to money owned by the citizenry. Taxes are given, normally under duress to the government for its own use. The government owns nothing and produces nothing.

The second error is the belief that letting rich people keep their money and get richer somehow means that someone else cannot get richer. The mountain of evidence contrary to this idea is apparently invisible to these leftists and their toy economists. Economics is not a zero sum activity.
- STEPHEN LOUIE Dec 24, 2017
  
  Sorry for the duplicate posts. Please tell me how to edit or delete or delete them.
  
  As I was saying Mr. Warren is quite right. The author may not understand how wealth is produced. Taxes are resources taken from the economy, and redistributed ... Minus the gov't cut for administrative "costs". Wealth or resources are only produced by the willing exchange. Gold in hand is worthless unless there is someone "WILLING" to exchange it for something the gold holder wants more. After the exchange, BOTH are richer because both have something they wanted more than the price of the exchange. Gov't can not make more wealth. Gov't can only redistribute wealth. Take from Peter to pay Paul. Leaving more resources in the hands that produced it, allows more wealth to be produced.
  
  Ms Thatcher said: "Socialists eventually run out of other people's money." because the gov't doesn't produce wealth. It only prints money
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Gennady Shkliarevsky Dec 24, 2017

Yep, a typical party (Democratic) line comment that masquerades as independent and objective opinion. Objective (definition): viewed from ALL sides.
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William Pu Dec 24, 2017

People who live in democracies have no right to blame anyone else but themselves for their dysfunctional government.

Besides, you misspelled democra$y.
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Jimm Roberts Dec 24, 2017

Splendid article about the beginning of the end of GOP control of the government . Their tax bill affirms the sad legacy of this generation to refuse to pay for evermore services it wants the government to provide. Terrible legacy

And the notion that this bill will create capital with which to create new investments, improved productivity and jobs is specious.

With interest rates near zero, making capital readily available for expansion of existing and/or the start of new businesses, actual new business starts have decreased 26% in the last five years.

This tax bill is essentially a transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street.
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Carl Buzawa Dec 24, 2017

This isn't a serious article. I get that the author despises Trump and doesn't care for modern Republicans but really
a) Republicans since Reagan have ALWAYS championed tax cuts, and since Reagan, such tax cuts are not budget neutral.
b) There is an argument, however sound, that tax cuts will not only "starve the beast" of government (again whether you like it or not) but will encourage growth as people spend their new tax free cash. This is especially true when currently US international corporations have parked, according to reports, $2.6 TRILLION dollars overseas to escape the USA's highest in the world nominal corporate tax rate. I only a trillion of these dollars are pulled out of overseas banks and overseas projects this will help the USA in terms of growth (and also harm other countries...but as Trump says "America First" ..and why should the USA companies subsidize development in China, Europe or other competitors of the USA?...let them use their own trade surpluses to do so)
c) The new tax cuts, at least in the accounts I have read are broadly consistent in the percentage of tax impact across class lines. Sure in a progressive tax system the rich pay far far more proportionately, so any tax cut disproportionately benefits them, but as a percentage of current tax liability most analyses I have seen show broad consistency...with some obvious winners and losers within each economic group
d) While you can argue the point, I suspect most people in lower tax states believe that fully exempting state and local taxes unfairly subsidizes the "Blue state" model... high tax, high services versus the "Red State" model, lower taxes lower services. Why should they since the former had NO political voice in those decisions. And in case someone says "Well blue states get less from the Federal government then Red States, that is a generalization, and certainly not true across the board...and often due to federal laws and administrative decrees passed primarily by Dems that restrict economic development that these states would otherwise engage in (mining and drilling out West etc etc). Similarly, it is laughable to state that restricting mortgage deductabliity to $750,000 (requiring in most cases a $1M home) disproportionately effects the poor...compared to the doubling of the standard deduction,,,which 76% of the people in the US, and virtually all poor and middle class people take.

Instead these are impacts felt largely by the elite of Boston, NYC, Wash, and SF...HARDLY "the poor". While I could certainly argue that these limits should be phased in more gradually say over a 3 year period, I can also see where any subsequent tax increase on these few people might be politically impossible if the Dems take control of either branch of Congress

Again not to say that there isnt a lot of hypocrisy in this law...there is... as some special interests like the carried interest loophole etc were not touched, but any efforts to simplify the tax code has some merit
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j. von Hettlingen Dec 19, 2017

Nina L. Khrushcheva decries the spineless Republicans in Congress because they are going to pass the tax bill that would lead to further disparities between the rich and poor, benefitting "America’s wealthiest households at the expense of saddling the country with more than $1 trillion in additional debt."
In the past the GOP was known for its debt aversion. When Obama was in office, Republicans were heard arguing that both short-term budget deficits and the long-term accumulation of national debt were acute economic problems that could not be tolerated. With Trump in the White House the GOP has learned to love debt and Congress is helping him get the expensive tax cuts passed. The Passage of the tax plan is a much-needed win for Trump and the Republicans, who would have looked ineffective if the bill was defeated.
The author says the "fate of nations often comes down to the choices made by a handful of individuals at a particular moment in history." The Russian Revolution would have taken a different without Vladimir Lenin. Russia might have been a different country had not Boris Jelzin picked Vladimir Putin to succeed him in 1999, "choosing to prioritize his own safety and that of his family over the wellbeing of Russia."
Historians could ask where France would be today had not Charles de Gaulle escaped to Britain in 1940 and formed an exile government? What would have become of Britain had Winston Churchill not been prime minister the same year? Last week Theresa May suffered her first Commons defeat as prime minister, as Tory rebels led by Dominic Grieve, joined forces with Labour and the SNP to vote for a plan to give MPs a bigger say in any Brexit deal. Grieve is said to have received death threats for his courage to speak for a soft Brexit.
Today the US may well be facing "just such a moment" and the country's future depends on a few Republicans, whose decision will "shape the future not just of the country, but of democracy itself." Some Republicans realise the hole the bill is creating and call for cuts to popular entitlement programmes next year. Many of Trump’s core supporters will be hurt, but real estate investors like him and his son-in-law, Jared Kusher will benefit from multimillion-dollar windfall.
The question is whether the seven Republican senators – Susan Collins of Maine, Robert Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Marco Rubio of Florida – who "have voiced concerns about the bill" for various reasons, would muster enough courage to reject it. Their "concerns echo more fundamental fears.....that the Trump administration is doing serious harm to US institutions."
In May when Obama was given the Profile in Courage award at the John F Kennedy Presidential library in Boston, he mentioned JFK's book "Profiles in Courage." The 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning volume of short biographies describe acts of bravery and integrity of eight US Senators, who defied the opinions of their party and constituents to do what they felt was right and suffered severe criticism and losses in popularity. Urging GOP lawmakers to defend his healthcare programme, Obama undersocred the desire to maintain "integrity that is stronger than the desire to maintain office – the faith that the right course will be vindicated. Personal sacrifice."
Some of the above-mentioned GOP Senators are adamant detractors of Trump's presidency. The author says, they seem willing to put their partisan loyalty ahead of the country's interests. Now she is urging for a "Kennedyesque Profiles in Cowardice" be written that is focused on Republicans’ greed and "lack of personal integrity." It is doubtful if the public is keen on reading it, given how unpopular Republicans are. If penned, by the time the book is finished, one could ask, "what will have become of American democracy by then."
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Steve Hurst Dec 18, 2017

“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan.” ― Adolf Hitler
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Ariel Tejera Dec 18, 2017

Has everyone gone mad ? Well ... as you can see, going back to the XX century, post WWII international institutions were established, mainly by the US, with the intention of preventing further world conflicts of that magnitude. Take the case of NATO and the EU. And those institutions worked very well. But today, there seems to be a wave of open rejection towards them, a quick shift, sudden and really unexpected. Sizeable populations have stopped caring for them, have stopped finding true value on them.

My take is that global trade and global finance are so strong now that there's no need to pamper them, and they may even act as inhibitors of "world wars", effectively. See the case of the fall of the USSR. It was market, financial and technological forces that cracked it. The Asian tigers and China could not be ignored.
- ron smith Dec 20, 2017
  
  The notion that business interest would act as inhibitors of war was quite popular in Western Europe early in the XX century. It was only discarded when the Kaiser invaded the low countries.
  - Ariel Tejera Dec 21, 2017
    
    Right. However, the world is now smaller, logistically much smaller, and WMD are plentiful. So the stakes are much higher than in 1914. Today, war is not inviting, the notion of "winner takes all" has evaporated: now the odds are "everbody parishes".
    
    The issue, in my view, is more of the kind of: How globalization will evolve with these new adversaries?
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